David Shaw: Stanford might not open attack as much at Washington

Stanford quarterback K.J. Costello threw 43 passes against Washington State, the Cardinal’s most in a game in eight years.

Photo: Don Feria / Associated Press

Stanford fans might not see an “Air Shaw” passing game over the final four games of the regular season, but head coach David Shaw said he liked what he saw when he opened up the attack against Washington State.

The Cardinal (5-3, 3-2 Pac-12) still lost 41-38 on a late field goal, putting a serious crimp in their hopes of winning the North Division title.

Their passing game, however, was gangbusters.

K.J. Costello, playing with a bandaged middle finger on his throwing hand after it was stepped on at Arizona State, was excellent. He completed 34 of 43 passes for 323 yards and four touchdowns without an interception.

Saturday’s game

Who: Stanford (5-3, 3-2 Pac-12) at Washington (6-1, 3-1)

Where: Husky Stadium, Seattle

When: 6 p.m.

TV/Radio: P12Net/1050

Read More

Stanford hadn’t tried that many passes in eight years. The last time the Cardinal let a quarterback air it out to that degree was Oct. 2, 2010, when Andrew Luck went 29-for-46 for 241 yards as the No. 9 Cardinal lost 52-31 to No. 4 Oregon in Eugene.

Will the Cardinal continue to throw and again go up-tempo when they visit Washington on Saturday?

Shaw wasn’t about to give away his game plan to reporters Tuesday, but he said the no-huddle offense, which his team used for much of Saturday’s game, “can be part of what we do.”

He pointed out that conditions in Seattle might preclude a consistent aerial attack. “It’s going to be rainy, it’s going to be cold, it’s going to be loud,” he said.

Last year’s heartbreaking loss at Washington State helped steer Shaw clear of trying to grind out yardage on the ground.

“It’s hard to run the ball against those guys,” he said, “with the lateral movement, the speed and athleticism they have up front.”

With the running game operating in fits and starts this year, he thought his line was better at pass-blocking. Also, Bryce Love — who’s again day-to-day this week with a sore ankle — and other running backs have been hampered by injuries, Shaw said.

“In last year’s game, we thought we had some matchups in our favor outside, with the receivers and tight ends,” he said. “I wanted to make sure we came out of this game not feeling the same way we did last year, (when we) left bullets in the chamber, left good plays uncalled.”

Unfortunately for Stanford, WSU quarterback Gardner Minshew (40-for-50, 438 yards, three touchdowns) was superb. After the game, Cougars head coach Mike Leach called him “the best quarterback in the country.”

“I’m not going to argue with him,” Shaw said. Minshew “made some throws that other guys don’t attempt.” Besides his accuracy, he deftly eluded tacklers with his “great feet and great anticipation. … I haven’t seen all the quarterbacks in the country, but from what I’ve seen, this guy is playing the best.”

Play call: Shaw defended his decision to eschew a 49-yard field-goal try on 4th-and-3 with the score 31-31 with nine minutes left. He called it “the right decision” even though it backfired when Love was trapped for a loss on a screen pass. Shaw said kicker Jet Toner has “been a little banged up, not 100 percent.” He said the screen pass was a play “we felt good about.”

Injuries: Guard Nate Herbig, who has missed the past two games with an undisclosed injury, will be day-to-day this week, Shaw said. So will backup tailback Trevor Speights. On the other hand, outside linebacker Curtis Robinson, who has yet to play this year, and wide receiver Connor Wedington, who hasn’t played since the opener, are expected to be back in action in Seattle.

Tom FitzGerald has been the Stanford beat writer for the San Francisco Chronicle since 2009 and has gone to a bowl game every year with the Cardinal football team. He also covers men’s and women’s basketball and many other Stanford sports.

He also covers motor sports in the Bay Area and wrote about the America's Cup regatta in San Francisco in 2013, during which Oracle Team USA made one of the greatest comebacks in sports history to beat Emirates Team New Zealand.

Among the many momentous games he has covered were the 49ers' victory over Dallas in the 1982 NFC Championship Game, which featured "The Catch'' by Dwight Clark, and the U.S. hockey team’s 1980 Olympic upset of the Soviet Union in Lake Placid, N.Y. At the 1984 Winter Olympics in Sarajevo, Yugoslavia, he rode the bobsled run with members of the U.S. team for a first-person story. He also rode on Russell Coutts’ Oracle Team USA catamaran in 2012 and in an Indy car with legendary Mario Andretti in 2014 for other first-person stories.

For 15 years he wrote a popular sports humor column called "Top of the Sixth" (later re-titled "Open Season"). A weekly version of the column was nationally syndicated in as many as 50 daily newspapers.

He has a degree in political science from the University of Massachusetts. He lives in Benicia.